The Best Overall Credit Card For Travel

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Best Credit Card for Travel | Cobalt Chronicles | Washington DC | Travel Blogger

I get asked all the time – What’s the best credit card to have for accumulating points for travel? Today I’m sharing with you why the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is one of the best credit cards for travel!

1. Ultimate Rewards

Ultimate Rewards is the point system through which you accumulate points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, and Chase Ink cards. For ease, let’s call them UR points. In my opinion, UR points are among the most valuable points that you can accrue because you can transfer them to different travel partners, and most of the time the transfer rate is 1:1. I wrote an entire post on Chase travel partners, check it out here!

2. Double Points on Travel and Dinning

With the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you earn 1 point for every $1 you spend on ANY purchase, but the kicker is that you earn 2 points for every $1 you spend on travel and dinning! If you eat out as much as I do, this adds up FAST! Another plus is that Chase groups a lot of purchases under the “travel” umbrella like Uber rides, for example.

3. No Foreign Transaction Fees

When you do have the opportunity to book a trip and travel abroad, you can use your Chase Sapphire Preferred card without having to worry about foreign transaction fees! I used mine throughout Southeast Asia (when credit cards were accepted) with no problem and no fees!

4. Easy Transfer of UR Points from Freedom to Sapphire

If you happen to already have the Chase Freedom card, you can easily transfer UR points from your Freedom account to your Sapphire account! It’s best to use your UR points through your Sapphire account because you can utilize the transfer partners. Chase Freedom doesn’t allow you to utilize the transfer partners, but it’s a great card to have in your wallet because it offers 5x on certain spend categories every quarter of the year.  I wrote a post on the perks of the Chase Freedom card – check it out here!

5. Sign Up Bonus

The sign up bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred is usually around 50,000 UR points when you spend $4000 in the first 3 months of being approved for the card. To put that into perspective, I just booked a roundtrip flight to Europe with 60,000 UR points. So basically you’ve got a trip to Europe when you open the card if you meet your minimum spend requirement!

And there you have it! I have and love the Sapphire Preferred card.  I highly recommend it if you are planning on doing any traveling in the near future. Also, even if you aren’t planning on transferring the points to a travel partner, the double points on dining alone can add up fast so in my opinion, it’s an overall awesome card to have!  (Note: Since the first publication of this post, the Sapphire Reserve was released – it’s a higher tier card than the Preferred.  I now have the Reserve, but still recommend the Preferred as a great credit card to have in your wallet!  If you have the Preferred and are looking to switch to the Reserve, read this post first!)

If you have any questions about the card or other travel credit cards, feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected] and I can walk you through any questions you might have!

If you haven’t read my intro post on accumulating credit card points for travel, be sure to read it here.

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2 Comments

  1. Tanvi wrote:

    Incidentally I was JUST taking to hubs about a new cc. I will look into it.

    I also think Capital One is a good card for the same purposes! 🙂

    ∞ © tanvii.com ∞

    Posted 7.19.16
    • Ashlee wrote:

      Perfect timing! I’ll have to look into the Capital One card!

      -Ashlee

      Posted 7.20.16

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